oubles he did not doubt. Neither
did he doubt that he could help her if he could discover what they
were. But he had no clue. In the midst of This meditations he heard the
thud of horses' hoofs coming down the road. Until that moment he had not
felt his own loneliness. He shrank back into the fence-corner. The
horsemen were galloping. There were three of them, and there was one
figure that seemed familiar to Ralph. But he could not tell who it was.
Neither could he remember having seen the horse, which was a sorrel with
a white left forefoot and a white nose. The men noticed him and reined
up a little. Why he should have been startled by the presence of these
men he could not tell, but an indefinable dread seized him. They
galloped on, and he stood still shivering with a nervous fear. The cold
seemed to have got into his bones. He remembered that the region lying
on Flat Creek and Clifty Creek had the reputation of being infested with
thieves, who practiced horse-stealing and house-breaking. For ever since
the day when Murrell's confederate bands were paralyzed by the death of
their leader, there have still existed gangs of desperadoes in parts of
Southern Indiana and Illinois, and in Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, and the
Southwest. It is out of these materials that border ruffianism has
grown, and the nine members of the Reno band who were hanged two or
three years ago by lynch law[17], were remains of the bad blood that
came into the West in the days of Daniel Boone. Shall I not say that
these bands of desperadoes still found among the "poor whitey,
dirt-eater" class are the outcroppings of the bad blood sent from
England in convict-ships? Ought an old country to sow the fertile soil
of a colony with such noxious seed?

Before Ralph was able to move, he heard the hoofs of another horse
striking upon the hard ground in an easy pace. The rider was Dr. Small.
He checked his horse in a cool way, and stood still a few seconds while
he scrutinized Ralph. Then he rode on, keeping the same easy gait as
before, Ralph had a superstitious horror of Henry Small. And, shuddering
with cold, he crept like a thief over the fence, past the tree, through
the pasture, back to Pete Jones's, never once thinking of the eyes that
looked out of the window at Means's. Climbing the ladder, he got into
bed, and shook as with the ague. He tried to reason himself out of the
foolish terror that possessed him, but he could not.

Half an hour later he